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Monday, 20 January 2014

The original Shenmue was released on the Dreamcast in 2000. The game
is set in 1986 Japan, when our protagonist Ryo Hazuki’s father is
murdered. Ryo vows revenge and the game sees him trying to track down
the killer and unravel the mystery surrounding his father’s past.
Taking control of Ryo in his bedroom a few days after the murder, you
are then free to investigate and explore the world of Shenmue at your
own pace.

Progression (at least during the first two acts) is entirely player
driven. You can follow up several clues in a single day, or you can
take an entire week, depending on how you choose to spend your time.
Shenmue may be the only game you can actually lose by being lazy.
The game begins in late November and you’re expected to complete
the main story by Spring, but if you don’t get too sidetracked, you
can easily finish it before Christmas.

The world isn’t exactly massive in terms of the external
environments, but there are dozens of internal locations. This is a
world with a fantastic attention to detail. There are hundreds of
NPCs, all of whom have daily routines. They get up and go to work.
They may visit a bar in the evening. They may go jogging in the park.
Many are completely irrelevant to the story, as are many of the
locations you can visit. Yet all of them have been carefully crafted
despite a chance the player may never even encounter them. The world
has a day/night cycle and a weather system for rain and snow. As
Christmas approaches you’ll see decorations being put up in the
streets. It feels like a living world, far more than many modern
sandbox games.

And there’s a ton of hidden stuff in the world of Shenmue. Even
playing it again today I encountered scenes I’d not seen before as
there are many situations triggered by date, time and location. Yet
the story and your adventure grow organically out of how you choose
to approach it and the time you choose to take. Graphically, Shenmue
may be looking a little rough here and there these days, but there
are times when the detailed textures would amusingly put some modern
games to shame.

Shenmue has a fine soundtrack, but the VA work is pretty awful. It’s
stilted and often (unintentionally) hilarious. They should have stuck
with subtitles and the original Japanese VA as they did in Shenmue 2.
You can’t help but cringe at times as Ryo speaks to people in an
odd, awkward manner.

Outside of the main story there’s quite a bit to keep you busy.
Collectible toys are an addictive (and expensive) way to burn through
your limited cash. You can also buy music tapes you can listen to,
and there are also raffles to enter to win more toys, tapes and even
Sega Saturn games you can play on Ryo’s home system (presumably
sent from the future). There’s also an arcade of different games to
play as well as slot machines, and scrolls which you can buy to learn
new attacks for the game’s combat system. And you can train and
spar in certain places to ‘level up’ these attacks.

The combat system feels very similar to Virtua Fighter. It’s quite
slow paced, with precise button combinations, dodges and timing being
key. It has a fair degree of depth if you explore it fully, but I
felt it was a system best utilised in 1v1 scenarios, and sadly
there’s not too many of those in the game. Instead, you fight more
often against multiple opponents, and it’s a lot easier to spam a
couple of heavy attacks to win in those situations than use any sort
of strategy or finesse, and this renders a lot of that depth rather
redundant.

There are plenty of cinematic scenes, but none are either too long or
intrusive. There are also QTE sequences for combat/chase events with
multiple paths, so a single slip in most cases simply leads to a
diversion, and these can add flavour to certain cinematic moments. So
far, so good, right? Great graphics. Robust combat system. A mixture
of free roam sandbox with player led progression and exploration.
Unfortunately, the third act rather lets it all down.

Ryo is trying to track down a gang and takes a job at the docks to
find them. There’s a novelty to this for the first few days but it
rapidly becomes a rather tedious chore. To make matters worse, the
plot is no longer player driven, so you’re really just killing time
during and after work until the next story scene triggers. There’s
no way to advance it through your own initiative and investigation as
in the rest of the game, which is quite disappointing, because that’s
where Shenmue really shines.

But despite the disappointing third act, the game does end on a high
note and sets things up nicely for the sequel. It remains today a
very enjoyable, engaging experience. A player driven adventure that
has a remarkable attention to detail in a lovingly crafted world.
Shenmue felt quite unique and revolutionary at the time of its
release. There was nothing else quite like it, and in many ways,
that’s still true today.

Monday, 13 January 2014

Okay, so it’s probably time for an update. I didn’t quite hit
that 50k target by the end of the year as I planned. I fell a little
short. Okay, so quite a bit short. 20K short, in fact. But I got a
little side tracked with another project which needed my attention.
That’s done now though, so it’s back to work on TSOTS.

But I think the little break helped. I’ve said before that taking a
break and coming back to look at things fresh can help. But the
downside is that it’s hard to get back into the swing of things
again. So you really just have to write. It doesn’t matter if it’s
terrible. You just have to force yourself back into it. But I am back
into it now, and it’s going fine. I’ve been working on some
tricky sections which have slowed me down, but they’re now out of
the way, so I hope things should speed up from here.

So yeah, what else? Well I can’t say there’s much in terms of
games coming out this year that I’m interested in. And I’ve
mostly cleared my backlog now too, which is good. I guess that means
I get the chance to sit and play through some older titles I’ve not
played in years, and some more recent titles I really just want to
play again. So you can probably expect a real mix of reviews this
year, including some older console titles. I doubt there will be much
new stuff in there.